Throw Them Back Together
by SweetG
Summary: The women in Kurt Hummel's life, through his eyes. He remembers the first time he ever held a woman's hand, ever kissed one, ever planned to marry one; the first time one left him, the first time he loved one.


Mercedes is one of the kindest human beings he has ever had the pleasure to meet. She's caring, and she wants the best for everyone (even when they don't deserve it), and she's always ready to offer her sage advice and her help to anyone who may ask for it.

She's _awesome_. And he likes her so much that he wishes he could give her anything and everything she wanted, because if anyone out there deserves to have their every whim satisfied, that's his girl. His truthfully beautiful, talented and _amazing_ girl.

He can't even start to convey in coherent words how much he _adores_ her, how much she means to him, how important her very existence is for him.

...So the only time he _ever_ sincerely regrets being queerer than a three dollar bill is when he realises that they would have made (in some alternative universe where he didn't like boys so much) the best and most endgame couple ever.

_**:::…:::**_

The one time Kurt's ever felt anything vaguely sexual towards a girl, it is all Brittany. Brittany with her long cascading blonde hair (so different in texture and shade to Quinn's), her sweet inane laugh, her twinkling eyes, her curvy (yet graceful, and full of playful harmonies) soft body, the unending planes of skin leading from her legs to her hips. The way she talks, walks, breathes.

It's a brief affair, and he barely gets half-hard, at most.

But, still, it's the only time that Kurt's felt any sort of desire for someone who is evidently lacking in the penis department.

That alone makes her a very special person in Kurt's books.

(They dance –for and around each other-; he sings for her, she shows him how a backflip is properly executed. They _always_ have a natural ease.

_Pretty damn special._)

_**:::…:::**_

The first time he looks at a girl and thinks _gorgeous_, he's looking at a heavily pregnant Quinn Fabray. She is having some trouble while trying to lift herself from a chair. He goes and helps her, and she smiles at him and mutters _thanks. i'm so damn bloated nowadays that i can't even function properly_.

She should look a lot of ways (angry, frustrated, irritable, _unusual_), she just looks serene. Like whatever will be, will just be. As if she were a patient soldier, proud and poised. Someone who's ready for life to go get her (in all the best and worst ways).

And Kurt smiles at her, taking in her long batting eyelashes (that fall heavily over huge eyes that shine with youth and _love_, time after time) and thinks _gorgeous_.

_**:::…:::**_

Rachel is so loud that people residing on the other side of the world can probably hear her when she's on a particularly foul and berating mood.

Kurt is not actually proud of this, but sometimes he kind of wishes she would miraculously lose her golden voice and spare them all the suffering and bleeding ears.

(Other times, however, he listens to her singing and even though he will always prefer Mercedes' soulful and earth-shaking interpretations, he gets trapped within the imagery she creates with her long, well practised lines and notes. _Sometimes_ she sings something watered down from her usual boring perfection and less offensively loud and demanding, and he finds that he _likes_ her.

And maybe she's the first girl he's ever wanted something from, but he'll die before admitting to wanting to sound like she _sometimes_ does. Broken in all the right places, and full of raw nerves and shattered words.)

_**:::…:::**_

Despite calling himself an 'honorary girl', he's never actually wanted to be a woman. He doesn't mean that in any derogative or insulting way, he doesn't feel that being a woman would be awful or some other sexist notion, like that one; in fact, he harbours an undying respect for women. Women are the source of life; they are the pinnacle to everything strong, loving, open, and emphatic.

...He just likes being a guy. That's it.

And he's doing good just being a guy who _likes_ being a guy.

Until the first (and optimistically last) time he wants to hit a girl. Which is wrong, because his father may have not instilled gender specific behavioural rules in their home while he was growing up, but he _did_ teach him this one lesson about _never even thinking about laying a hand on a woman with a violent purpose, never. under no circumstances. just, never._

That night he gets a call. In the middle of the night on a weekday. It's Santana.

"Someone better be dead, Lopez " He says, eyes closed and voice strained.

There's silence for a second or two or ten, on the other end of the line, and he maybe freaks out a bit. Then Santana talks, rushed and quietly frantic. There's a tell-tale trace of alcohol in every word.

"I fucked a stranger without protection. I don't know where I am, I'm scared. Shit, I think I'm gonna be sick."

Kurt opens up his eyes and sits up so quickly that he has to fight the begginings of a splitting headache and a sudden surge of nausea. He feels fear trying to invade him, and there's a panicking voice inside him that alternates between whimpering and screeching _i hate you, i hate you. why the fuck do _you_ hate yourself this much?_

The same voice tells him -while he's asking Santana to give him as much detail about her whereabouts es she can and dressing himself up at a bolt-like speed- _you don't have to do this for her_; and an acidic _why did she choose you? why couldn't she call someone else?_

As he's making his way silently out of his house and over to the Navigator, he tells the voice to kindly _shut the fuck up._

When he finds her, about an hour later (one of the most frightening hours of his short life), she is shaking like a leaf and holding back tears. There's a purple bruise on her left cheek and she walks over to the car slowly and with too much care, making it obvious that it hurts to move too briskly.

Kurt has to swallow his emotions (he wants to cry, to hurl, to hiss, to _hate_), and when Santana climbs onto the passenger seat and just stays there, every ounce of her snarky persona gone, he finds himself asking (and dreading all the possible answers to) the one question that is starting to eat him from the insides.

"Did you want it?"

There's silence; he looks at her and she is looking at him and it's like being punched in the gut.

There's a nod.

He wants to cry, to hurl, to hiss, to _hate_, and he wants to _slap her so hard that she'll never be able to forget the weight and shape of his hand_.

He just drives.

(A few days later he gets a text message from her: _got tested negative. thanks._)

_**:::…:::**_

When he's singing in the shower in the morning he always feels like the walls bring him back two voices instead of one; the first one, clearly his, refined and not-truly-feminine-not-truly-masculine. The other one is a soft lullaby, a bit too high and missing a few notes every now and then.

When he's fixing himself a light breakfast before driving to school, he can almost feel a hand ruffling his hair and smell the fresh fragrance that will always make him think about soft brown hair and wide smiles (much like his own) and expansive gestures that embrace freedom and joy.

When he wants to just take an out; pack his things up, grab his savings and just go as far away as his money will take him -the whole deal-, there's always the ghost of sad clear eyes landing on him and a whisper of _baby, think this through_ that makes him stop.

When he looks at his mother's old pictures, he remembers the first time he ever held a woman's hand, ever kissed one, ever planned to marry one; the first time one left him, the first time he _loved_ one.


End file.
